


that man was invincible

by fated_addiction



Category: Casino Royale (2006), James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-27
Updated: 2012-11-27
Packaged: 2017-11-19 15:47:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/574945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fated_addiction/pseuds/fated_addiction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not all secrets live in a box.</p>
            </blockquote>





	that man was invincible

**Author's Note:**

> So, so, so _AU_ and this and that and spoilers for _Skyfall_ and _Casino Royale_. The things I write on my phone on public transit.

It’s been years – to the day, not to the day; if it mattered, one of them would be so inclined to say something. He is not sentimental. She has always been better at remembering dates.

Vesper buys macaroons. A tiny bag. There is a bakery by her flat. This changes. She goes by Elizabeth and drops the first one. None of that is important to know. None of this is planned well either. She will just say from time to time _remember when_ and _let’s not_ , when they run into what happened and why she is still very much alive and occasionally well.

It remains to be seen. 

They pass each other on a street. There is a newsstand. She buys the paper and her macaroons end up in the bottom of her bag. He buys her cigarettes. She has been trying to quit since fall. They stand side by side and this is how it usually starts up. His jacket remains impeccably pressed. Her blouse is too loose and her scarf is very red.

“You look rough,” she says.

He pushes his sunglasses to the bridge of his nose. “You’re no better,” he says.

“Exams. Try grading papers.”

He touches her bag. She pretends not to notice and drops it to her feet.

“No thanks.”

She scoffs.

“Your students though?” he asks. He is condescending. Her mouth twitches. She thinks about the logistics of charm.

“Doing splendidly,” she answers. “Except for a few,” she says too. “Bad apples and all that – ” her wrist flicks “– I suppose that’s why they send them to me.”

“Mmm.” He steps back. He takes her cigarettes too. “You would have hated me.”

Vesper laughs.

She is late. That much is true.

 

 

-

 

 

The majority of her memories are redacted. Irony tastes just as well as the first tea she forced herself to have in her brand new flat. She learns quickly: no one is looking for a former, to-do whiz kid who had numbers walk her into the Treasury for years and then killed her.

So she teaches History to teenagers. She eats blueberries in her muffin and has an allergy to seafood. Her mother always dies the year before. Her father always leaves when she was six. Her name is not Vesper. She is not angry. Most already know this. She is not on any list, but it’s worse. She is most certainly a lazy favor.

Sometimes she wonders about loose ends.

 

 

 

It happens as she imagines it would happen, or how it would _almost_ happen within the scale of rhyme and reason.

The front door is locked strangely. She does not smell her perfume when she walks inside with her heavy school bag. The collar of her jacket scratches at her throat.

Should she be surprised?

M sits in the dark. Her flat is rather warm. She left the heat on this morning.

“He’s dead.”

Vesper hangs her coat.

“I thought you should know,” the other woman says. She is talking to a shadow, or the row of books that form a nearby shelf. Her class work for the weekend sits on the coffee table and then some mail. It’s all relative and normal.

“Because he would want me to?” her voice is dry.

M does not laugh. “I suppose,” she says. “Perhaps even eventually.”

“That doesn’t sound like him,” Vesper replies, and the French sort of slips in, sharper with no intention. She walks to her kitchen. She turns the light on. She bites his lip.

“We’ll still sell his things.”

There is no baiting. There is a curious sort of pause; she can feel Bond’s mentor watch her carefully. It’s always too careful with M. That hasn’t changed. She thinks of Bond and locations though. She stops. It’s easy to catch herself.

“You know if he cared –”

M cuts her off. “Yes, well, it’s quite the effort to look for those things,” she says quickly. “And there’s storage.”

“There’s always storage,” Vesper agrees.

She keeps her back to the living room. She reaches for the kettle. She does not offer tea. Her gaze moves to the window over her sink. She blinks. She finally sees the car outside, running. There is a tuft of smoke.

If you could see us, she thinks too. The corners of her mouth tug. Her fingers push at the faucet and water bursts on.

“I wonder,” Vesper starts. She’s thoughtful and doesn’t finish.

She is not a grieving widow.

 

 

There is no what does she _do_ when he is dead, or rather, he _is_ dead, she lives, and for a while, she is most certainly selfish and that is easier. She understands that well enough. There is no Istanbul to call Istanbul. There is no M showing up to sit in her flat, reading her the riot act of remembering that she is alive and an unnecessary favor.

She can hear M say the following without regret:

“You’ve served, Miss Lynd.”

“It does not matter to me, whether you live or you die, but I have been in this game for far too long and sometimes you understand just how easy it is to keep a place.”

“Leave the sentiments, please.”

But this does not come. She still eats blueberries in her muffin. She almost falls in love with a man. She breaks another’s heart. She thinks about how easy it is to teach History; she tutors numbers on the side and that’s a strange, inherent sense of vice. She does not see him in her sleep. She will not wake up because of nightmares (occasionally, there will be the strangest of dreams where there is him and there is her and there is _that_ boat and they are still hidden away, far, far away, and she is asking _james_ if he’s sure he’s ready to leave and leave completely and he doesn’t look at her and smile too hard to say _sure_ ) or sleep closely to a certain side of her bed.

Occasionally she watches the news with disinterest. There is a forgotten bottle of scotch sitting under her sink.

Isn’t this what you do?

 

 

-

 

 

Except he lives. Or breathes in. At most, that’s a guessing game.

There is an explosion in MI6. The Americans call objective terrorism. Her students want to take a day. The paper is gone on her morning coffee run.

He comes to her that night, or the night after. He smells like whiskey. There is sand in his boots and she kicks them out into her entrance hallway.

“You know where the shower is,” she says.

“Mmm.” He watches her. She kicks one of his boots to stand. “Clothes?”

“Same place.”

“You kept them?”

Vesper shrugs. “You’re you,” she says. “Dead, alive – it’s not for the memories,” she trails off. She wonders what she’s admitting too.

He chuckles sharply. “That’s sweet.”

She meets his gaze. Still impossibly blue, she almost says. She doesn’t. He’s an ass with his replies as it is. But she knows the red rims and the dark lines under his eyes. Those are familiar to her.

She will not ask him where he’s been. She moves to him though. She walks away from the boots and grabs his jacket, skewed over the back of one of her chairs. She will not cook for him either. She still hates cooking. He still knows he would hate her cooking too. That counts for something too.

“The couch,” she says.

He drops and sits. “Yeah, I suppose.”

“It folds out.”

“That’s effort.” She snorts and his mouth twists. “Menu’s in the same place?”

“Leftovers in the fridge,” she shrugs. She takes his jacket with her to the kitchen. She opens the fridge door with her heel. “You remember how to use a microwave?”

“Should I be insulted?”

Vesper hides her smile. “You’re going to be whatever you want to be,” she quips.

“True,” he agrees.

He doesn’t eat. Eventually, she remembers that he doesn’t really sleep. Either way, she is not surprised and her door remains unlocked even though he’s the one that’s come back from the dead this time around.

She dumps the reminder of her scotch anyway.

Maybe for spite.

 

 

And maybe for sport, he’s in her bed later that night, while she’s tucked to her side, her reading glasses at her nose and bits of her t-shirt sliding up against the blanket and her thighs.

There is a light on. She doesn’t turn to face him. His palm touches her hip. She reads the same line in her book three times. There is nothing smooth about the way his hand wants to feel.

“Was she pretty?” she asks then. If she were crueler and if he were someone else, she’d go and ask, “Is she dead?” but he is not someone else and he would enjoy that go around too much.

His mouth catches her shoulder. “Beautiful.”

“Mmm,” she says. His palm moves from her hip to her breast. He cups it through her t-shirt. The fabric catches at his nail and her nipple. She bites her lip. “It certainly sounds like you,” she says breathlessly.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he says. His voice is even. “I went to the first place that would be one of the last that people would look. If they were to look – I had a strange go of perspective and all that nonsense.”

Her lips purse.

“She’s relieved,” he says too, and they are not talking about the hypothetical woman or women, she imagines.

She understands why she cannot go any further.

He fucks her with the light on instead.

She fucks him in the dark, in turn. Her mouth is too close to his and her eyes are too wide and she remembers why it is she no longer loves the sea.

Bond wears it well.

 

 

-

 

 

There is a small box in her bedroom closet.

There is no room on the shelves. There still hasn’t; in ten years, things like coats and clothes, boots and all weather worn items come and go as part of her brand new life and brand new responsibilities. The box remains archaic and childish. The sides are tired. A corner sags. If you were to look too closely, there is a photograph peeking out from underneath the lid.

If she were curious, she would see a house.

This is not her box. She remembers quite clearly the night or the day he came and found her and she patched him up right over her kitchen sink, peeling back haphazard bandages while waiting to ask when Bond was going to kill her. Maybe it was later when he brought the box.

“I won’t ask you for it,” he had said, and she had thought nothing of it, still won’t think anything of it. There only so many things she can keep.

It was the only time he would not look at her.

There is no question here.

 

 

She does not see him.

For days, weeks, months – she is not new to this and counting time is more than just redundant. That she learned from M.

The funeral makes all three major broadcast times.

They comment on the Prime Minister’s face. A bit of policy here and there will work its way into a pop quiz for her students the next day. They bypass M and her name, litter with segments from the previous trial and talking about the _end_ of an era when it comes to their country’s significant sense of safety.

Vesper watches. Vesper does not see him. Or does not look for him. This time around, it’s one and the same. She does think of what she shared with M, but does not call it something common like _close_ or _responsible_.

She watches all three broadcast times and lists the facts in her head:

Vesper Lynd is dead.

His mother was French. Orphans will always make the best candidates.

There will never be any sense of regret around him. Functionality keeps one alive and dependable. Burn down your secrets. Keep the rest in a small box away and close to do the dead.

He does not like poetry.

He does circle back. That’s a fault.

 

 

-

 

 

Bond walks Vesper two blocks. That is until someone shouts _Elizabeth_ and he makes little effort to hide his disdain.

“How dull,” he says.

“Well,” she shrugs. She reaches for the paper in his hand. She curls it between both of her hands and then tucks it back under his arm. “It is my name now.”

“You’re late.”

Her hand finds his tie. She tugs lightly.

“I’m always late.”

“It’s a terrible habit.” She cannot see his eyes. She meets her own gaze in his sunglass. Her mouth relaxes and he reaches forward, tucking her hair behind her ear. “You should work on it,” he says.

Vesper snorts. She hits his chest. There is no flinching.

“You should go and do something,” she tells him.

He chuckles. It’s low enough and he’s bending over her, _right_ over, in the direct line of a few other teachers that come barreling through to beat the students that are due soon. His fingers are still at her neck, then her throat – she feels it too close, knowing full well that she is wide-eyed and cannot hide that from him. There is something about how he looks now. She may still love him, she thinks. This is as far as she thinks, or will allow herself to think. There is more truth in the latter.

He dips his mouth over hers, then into hers, and she is halfway into tasting him, sighing into his lips as her fingers slowly curl and release his tie. This is not a kiss. There will be a rumor that will go around the school and then back again, if only to be forgotten. Maybe this time there will be years.

There is certain safety in being a favor.

 

 

-

 

 

Vesper finds the second box with her school things, after.

If she were curious, she would see the dog.


End file.
